Closure. The elusive word that’s been outrunning me for the last three years. Maybe this is the way I find it at last. “I promise,” I tell her.
She smiles and pats my cheek. “That’s my girl. Now dry your tears and go after that bride and groom before they trample my rosebushes. I’m going up to drink champagne in my bathtub.”
I can’t help my smile. “Of course you are.”
The look she gives me is long and tender. “You’re going to be okay, sweetheart. You took it on the chin today, but getting back up is what’s going to make you stronger.”
“Do you think I’ll find it, Agatha?” I ask in a quiet voice. “My own Happily Ever After?”
She smiles. “You’ll find your great love, Gracie. Something tells me he’ll be thelastperson you suspect. But remember what I said earlier. Your Happily Ever After is up to you. Not me, not the future love of your life, and certainly notKevin.”
I nod shakily, feeling an almost irrepressible urge to tell this woman, who has been more nurturing to me than my own family, that I love her. But then she’s gone, striding off in a twinkle of jewels before disappearing behind the heavy wooden door.
I’m… not okay. I’m whatever the opposite of okay is to the power of infiniteBrookies. But I wasn’t okay the night Calvin left me either, and I managed, didn’t I? I built a new life for myself, and right now, Jasmine and her family are depending on me. I wipe my tear-streaked face and straighten my back with the confidence of someone who knows that—at the very,veryleast—her day couldn’t possibly get worse.
And that’s when one of the beautiful white doves released at the ceremony flies beneath the portico, becomes confused, and shits directly on my black blazer.
3GRACIE
They say when you think things couldn’t possibly get worse, that’s when they do. Actually, I have no idea if “they” say that at all, but it’s the waking nightmare I’m currently living in, so I guess it must be true. Because Agatha… is gone.
I blink rapidly, trying not to cry again as the third funeral speaker drones on about Agatha’s generous charitable donations. Nearly everyone here is a politician, since Agatha’s daughter is the attorney general of Rhode Island. But in this sea of sensible pantsuits and manufactured condolences, grief is a fist slowly crushing my rib cage. Nobody mentions the way she would throw her head back when she cackled or how Elizabeth Taylor used to callherfor dating advice. None of them know how much she meant to me.
She was found in her bathtub last week, the day after Jasmine’s wedding. Heart failure, of all things. Even now, it seems ludicrous to the point of impossible that the woman I knew—with her zero-tolerance policy for bullshit and unflappable belief in the power of love—would succumb to failure of the heart. In the wake of her loss, the organ beating in my own chest feels enfeebled. As though it’s suddenly wondering what chance it stands against the battering ram of life ifAgatha Larkwood’scould simply give out? I suck in a calming breath, smoothing out my handmade dress.
In the last week, I put aside all the complicated feelings sewingbrings me and re-created the only black dress Agatha would have approved of. It felt like a way to honor her, since she continually asked to see my work from Grace & Veil—my failed bridal wear design business that cheerfully lowered me into the ninth circle of hell (also known as high-interest debt repayment). Sewing after so long had been cathartic, and even though I couldn’t afford the genuine satin of the original design, I think I did it justice. I think… I think Agatha would have loved it.
The politician steps away from the podium, and I’m hoping it’s the last colorless speech I have to sit through when someone from the front pew stands up. Immediately I recognize the hair. The height. The perfectly tailored suit.Agatha’s grandson.
He walks slowly up to the podium, head bowed. In the cool, dim light of the church, his carefully tamed waves are nearly as dark as his suit. An irrepressible curiosity to finally see his face, and perhaps a hint of Agatha’s, has my stomach muscles clenching.
He turns, facing the room at last, and the hinge of my jaw goes slack. The first look I get is of his pale profile. Dark brows, ruler-straight nose, and a soft mouth. His clean-shaven jaw looks like it was designed with a T square and blueprints. The wordsoutrageously handsomefloat back to me in Agatha’s voice, and that’s before he even turns to face us completely. When he does, I lose any pretense of gazing politely and segue neatly into ogling.
Without looking at anyone, he places a wooden box on the podium and raises the mic by about a foot. He opens the box, and for a wild moment, I think I’m about to see Agatha’s ashes. But then he pulls out…a party hat?
I lean forward, sure I’m mistaken, but no—it’s a metallic gold paper cone with a pink pom-pom on top. The church goes silent. No rustle of fabric, no covered coughs,nothing, as with complete seriousness, this solemn man in his solemn suit stretches the elastic band and carefully positions the hat on his head at a jaunty angle. He follows this spectacle by reaching back into the box and pulling out a shocking pink feather boa, which he loops precisely behind his neck and over one shoulder.
Then he looks up. His eyes are startling, but not just because they’re the color of burnt caramel. It’s the way he’s glaring at all of us with distinct disapproval while wearing a children’s party hat and matching feather boa. Likewe’rethe ones acting inappropriately.
“Good afternoon,” he says in a voice that’s deep and serious. “My name is Jude Larkwood, and I was lucky enough to be Agatha’s grandson.” Emotion briefly tightens the muscles around his eyes, and he visibly swallows.Jude. I turn his name over in my mind like a ruby, realizing only now that Agatha exclusively referred to him asmy grandson. I never asked her for more details. Never wanted to show interest in him when my heart was so firmly elsewhere. But now, as I see him muster control over grief as unwieldy as my own, the urge to somehow connect with him—with someone else who loved her—is overwhelming.
“As others have mentioned before me,” he goes on, “my grandmother was a remarkable woman, known for her generous patronage of the arts and her commitment to preserving Larkwood Estate—one of Rhode Island’s greatest architectural treasures. But these are facets of her life that mattered little to me as her grandson.” He swiftly brushes a hand beneath his eye. “You may be expecting me to speak about her tenderness. The warmth of her embrace. Perhaps about the cookies she’d bake for me as a child. But she was never that kind of grandmother. The truth is, the nana I grew up with was far more likely to sneak me into a cocktail bar with her theater friends and keep me behaving with sips from her dirty martini.”
A small whoop goes up at the back of the church, where those late-arriving theater friends have gathered. Disapproval ripples through the crowd, but all I feel is an invisible rope and grappling hook launch itself directly from my chest toward this man. Heknewher. Really knew her.
“I don’t tell that story to disparage her character,” he goes on, “but, instead, to celebrate it. And to also partly serve as an explanation for the last part of my eulogy.” He removes a folded piece of paper from the box. “I was one of the lucky few who visited her in the weeks leading up to her passing. When I did, she insisted she didn’t know when the world would be deprived of her sparkling presencebut gave me firm orders to wear these… accessories at her memorial when the day came to pass. She also instructed me to read a poem she’d written to—and I quote—‘breathe a little goddamn life into the affair.’ So without further ado,” he continues, unfolding the paper before him, “the words my grandmother chose to be remembered by.” He clears his throat, raises his cleft chin, and says in his resonant voice:
“There was an old girl from Larkwood,
who was often misunderstood.
Except when she lifted
her fine skirts and insisted,
that handsome gents take a tour of her goods.
“Now she’s gone and it’s shocking
